Film Library

The Jerusalem Fund has built up an extensive film library and holds a film series every summer. The films chronicle the experiences of Palestinians within the Occupied Territories, Israel, and the Middle East. They survey a variety of issues, including historical circumstances, political exigencies, and Palestinian society and culture. Films can be loaned in accordance with the Fund’s criteria and its agreements with individual production companies. For more information contact salkassim@thejerusalemfund.org

Selected films include:

CROSSING KALANDIA / 2002 / 54 min [Palestine]
A year in the life of Palestinians in less than an hour. This film defines people’s ability to go on in the midst of siege, humiliation and the horrors of war. Director Sobhi al Zobeidi, living in Ramallah with his wife and little girl, focuses on “the power of life, not on the power of those who seek to destroy it.”

DIVINE INTERVENTION/ 2002 / 89 min. [Palestine]
In this rare and satirical glimpse into the Arab psyche, filmmaker Elia Suleiman plays himself as a director burdened with a stalled screenplay, a sick father whose house is being gutted by tax collectors, and an unrequited love affair with a beautiful Palestinian woman who lives in the occupied city of Ramallah. Their love affair, which serves as a quiet metaphor for the larger struggle for Palestinian independence, takes place in the parking lot of an Israeli checkpoint between Ramallah and Jerusalem. As they gaze in silent amazement, their world unfolds in front of them in a series of absurdist vignettes that speak to the sorrow and lunacy of the conflict and the effects it has on all sides.

EDWARD SAID /1992 / 40 min. [USA]
Noted scholar the late Edward Said discusses his postcolonial theory and how it applies to modern culture, from politics to literature. He discusses Palestine as a politically expedient construct of Europe; argues the right of Palestine to exist as an independent, self-governing nation; and traces the origins of European attitudes toward the Arab world through the literature of E.M. Forster, T.S. Eliot, Joseph Conrad, and Chinua Achebe.

FORD TRANSIT /2002 /80 min. [Palestine]
This film follows cab driver Rajai through Ramallah and East Jerusalem. The director says “the Ford Transit is a metaphor for the theater of the Palestinians, a people without a homeland.” The movie examines the lives of van passengers, including politicians, day laborers, children and fellow filmmakers, as they navigate the checkpoints of the West Bank. The director won the 2003 Human Rights Watch Nestor Almendros Prize for courage in filmmaking.

GAZA STRIP / 2002 / 87 min. [USA]
This film follows a range of characters and events in different cities and towns inside the Gaza Strip from February to March 2001. Gaza Strip aspires to the most basic aim of documentary film: to fix reality in an unblinking, thought-provoking way, and to create a document of time and place that would otherwise never be recorded.

THE OCCUPIED / 2003 / 99 min. [Denmark]
The Occupied portrays a year in the life of five Palestinians, weaving their lives into a documentary on the history of the Palestinians since 1948, and especially since the occupation of 1967. Jorgen Flindt Pedersen’s film is more about emotional than physical occupation; the demons that the occupation let loose which threaten to take away a person’s humanity; where the executioner and the victim constantly take each other’s role.

PEACE, PROPAGANDA AND THE PROMISED LAND / 2004/ 80 min. [USA]
This pivotal video exposes how the foreign policy interests of American political elites-working in combination with Israeli public relations strategies, exercise a powerful influence over news reporting about the Middle East conflict. American and British TV news clips are combined with observations of journalists, analysts, and political activists.

RANA’S WEDDING /2002 / 90 min. [Palestine] Rana wakes up one morning to an ultimatum delivered by her father: she must either choose a husband from a pre-selected list of eligible men, or she must accompany her father abroad. Wanting to marry the man of her own choice, she has only ten hours to find her boyfriend in occupied Jerusalem. Rana sneaks out of her father’s house at daybreak to find Khalil, her forbidden love. Facing barriers and occupation which have become an everyday reality, Rana overcomes her fears and doubts, deciding not to let anyone control her life. Shot entirely on location in East Jerusalem and Ramallah.